Quality of emergency care provided by physician assistants and nurse practitioners in acute asthma.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of care provided by physician assistants or nurse practitioners (ie, midlevel providers [MLPs]) in acute asthma, as compared with that provided by physicians.

Methods

We performed a secondary analysis of the asthma component of the National Emergency Department Safety Study. We identified emergency department (ED) visits for acute asthma in 63 urban EDs in 23 US states between 2003 and 2006. Quality of care was evaluated based on 12 guideline-recommended process-of-care measures, a composite guideline concordance score, and 2 outcome-of-care measures (admission and ED length of stay).

Results

Of the 4029 patients included in this analysis, 3622 (90%) were seen by physicians only, 319 (8%) by MLPs supervised b

SUBMITTER: Tsai CL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3838672 | biostudies-literature | 2010 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature